Lee Jasper on walkabout pt4 of 4

London Mayor Johnson refuses to acknowledge UK’s first African Slavery Memorial Day.

2007 saw the commemoration of the British Bi Centennial anniversary of the Transatlantic Slave Trade throughout the country. The nation in towns and in particular port cities remembered their involvement in the greatest crime in human history. Liverpool. Bristol, Cardiff in addition to London, Manchester and other cities held commemorative events to mark this historic occasion.

The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone supported a campaign by black and white people all over the county to convince Government to establish a national day to commemorate, reflect and educate British communities on the contributions that enslaved African were forced to make to the making of modern Britain. UNESCO established The 23rd August in 1997 as the official International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. This date marked the worlds first slave revolution in 1791 on the then French colony of Haiti. Led by the indomitable and uncompromising African revolutionary Toussaint L’Overture who along with his ‘slave army’ slaughtered the colonial armies of France, Spain and Britain. Liverpool was the first British city to offer a formal apology for its role in the evil trade and further distinguished itself by ensuring the day became a hugely important event on their civic calendar.

London followed as Ken Livingstone last year held an inaugural memorial event at City Hall supported by the United Nations. At a moving and tearful event Ken apologized on behalf of Londoners for the city involvement in the Slave trade. That day he committed to ensuring annual event would be held. Government eventually agreed with Liverpool and London and last year formally established this 23rd August as the official day of remembrance

This year Mayor Boris Johnson has chosen to virtually ignore this critically important day. No funding has been made available by City Hall for community groups seeking to hold events and much, much worse the Mayor himself has decided the day is not worth a jot. The message he is sending out is both clear and unmistakable it is quite simply the most horrendous, unnecessary, and gratuitous and grossly insulting offence he has yet committed. And make no mistake this act of profound ignorance is deliberately calculated to offend. One can imagine the furore if the Mayor took the same approach to the forthcoming National Holocaust Memorial Day commemorating the Jewish holocaust by Nazi Germany?

Yet Johnson emboldened with his slim electoral victory and urged to close down such ‘ politically correct’ events, has decided that London need not trouble itself with a day that so many of us campaigned long and hard for. It is an insult so grave, so calculated, so designed to offend that as a Black person one is left with the inescapable conclusion that such grave offence now confirms our worst fears about Johnson’s City Hall administration.

We worried about Johnsons pre Mayoral comment’s about Africans with ‘’watermelon smiles”. We were agitated when we heard him describe Africans as ‘ piccaninies’ words not uttered by a mainstream British politician since they were last used by the arch racist Enoch Powell. We were perplexed as he openly promoted the cause of a return of colonial rule to the African continent.

The running dogs of racism assured us that his comments in no way reflected Johnson’s views about black people and that all these comments were taken out of context. We were being to ‘sensitive” we were told and accused of not having “a sense of humour”. Upon his election we hoped that such matters were the uttering’s of the juvenile and provocative Bullingdon Club Johnson and would not be repeated by Johnson the Mayor of London.

We witnessed the resignation of his top aide McGrath who told us “ go back to where we come from” and our anxieties again began to rise. We looked on in horror as the Ray Lewis debacle unfolded and were briefly impressed with Johnsons’ stand by my man attitude’ but ultimately disappointed as he dropped the desperately naive Lewis like a hot brick.

He without apology, failed to send a representative to Africa Day celebrations in Trafalgar Square, he gutted the Rise festival of its clear anti racist theme and he is ethnically cleansing London Government of black people. I invite you to look at the figures of the number of black faces in high places across the GLA group and in the core GLA administration. A trend all to evident in his sacking or getting rid of senior black staff, his virtual all white male appointments to his Mayoral team and virtual eradication of equality and race equality measures throughout the Greater London Authority.

I find it incredible that he should now seek to so publically humiliate the modern day descendant of African slaves and the work of the abolitionists by refusing and make no mistake he is refusing to formally acknowledge this inaugural Memorial Day.

Why is such a day important? Slavery endured globally for some 400 years and the seer brutality both physical and psychological on enslaved Africans was then and remains now unprecedented in all human history. It is a conservative estimate that over 20 million and some historians say as many as 50 million Africans were forcibly caught, enslaved and transported to Britain’s plantations. The legacy of that most dark period remains with us all today. One of its most potent legacies racism remains a malevolent force in the world today and has been and continues to be responsible for the deaths of millions of people. For others whole generations of African lives are blighted and the lives of billions of people worldwide continue to be affected.

Descendants of enslaved Africans and other people of colour continue to suffer and endure the social reality of racism relegating them to a lesser existence than their white counterparts. We continue to suffer as a people, both black and white the deep psychological scars of 300 years of brutal plantation life and the subsequent 100 years struggle against racism and the historic struggle for human, civil and political rights.

London and the United Kingdom enjoyed the development of industry, commerce, and civic life and witnessed the urban growth of the city metropolis as the vast profits flowed into the country. The unprecedented profits generated from the enforced labour of enslaved Africans and subsequent colonial exploitation funded the British industrial revolution and the major infrastructure, and public and private sector development of modern Britain.

To understand the scale of such vast profits one only has consider the strategic importance of oil in today’s global economy. Wars are fought won and lost over its importance; national economies are either made or broken as a consequence of access to oil. Globally the level of international economic activity is determined by the price of oil. Such was the strategic importance of sugar during the period of slavery to the world economy.

London's importance as a world city today, with a thriving financial service sector, owes its success largely to profits made from the slave trade. Slavery was a respectable occupation in the 16th 17th and 18th centuries, and many City of London merchants grew wealthy on it by providing credit and insurance for slave voyages. The Bank of England, set up in 1694, made capital available for slave voyages and the City became the financial centre of the slave trade. Alexander and David Barclay were Quaker slave traders who operated in the West Indies, and founded Barclay’s Bank on slave trade profits. Sir Francis Baring, whose family eventually founded Barings Bank, had major financial interests in slavery. Today Baring Road in Lewisham southeast London is named after him.

The Royal Dockyard at Deptford, one of Britain's major ports and centre’s for shipbuilding, and Blackheath and Greenwich, was where prosperous captains and merchants made rich by the slave trade lived in comfortable mansions. From the National Portrait Gallery to the Tate Gallery, St Guys Hospital and the Queens Palaces, the Houses of Parliament London all funded in part by the inglorious trade. Britain profited immensely from the blood soaked sugar cargoes that were delivered off the broken backs of generations of enslaved Africans.

London became the financial capital it is today. Few Londoners now understand the extent of Britain's involvement in the slave trade, and the fact that London's association was both longer and economically more significant that that of any other British city. Few Londoners including the Mayor of London and his anti African administration it appears. My own view is that until such time as Johnson apologies and seeks to make amends then he should not be invited to any African or black led event to do so would only invite further abuse. He has simply removed himself beyond the boundaries what can be considered acceptable. We will all have political differences in relation to the priority accorded to the policy of anti racism that is part of the normal political discourse. However to insult the memory of millions of enslaved Africans and to politically defecate on the modern descendants of these enslaved Africans is beyond forgiveness.